Hey, Steve Buckley! This is why Yankee fans hate Sox fans…

I spent many a painful year going to school and working in Boston, starting back when the Sox couldn’t suck enough, and they couldn’t even sell out Fenway, even against the Yanks…long before all these bandwagon fans came out of the woodwork.  But through my astute observation (basically it was as plain as the nose on my face), Sox fans had a huge inferiority complex when it came to the Yanks.  And they blamed everything on the Curse of the Bambino.  Sox aren’t winning?  Curse of the Bambino.  Train broke down?  Curse of the Bambino.  Girlfriend dumped me?  Must be that damn curse.  But what it came down to was that the average Sox fan was one-dimensional, only knew one thing, and clung on to the past, reluctant to change, and only spit out the company line when confronted by out-of-towners.

And it’s this one-dimensional character flaw where they lead that battle cry, “Yankees suck!”  So the Yanks are playing the Sox?  Sure thing, yell your face off.  But Cleveland’s in town and you’re still chanting “Yankees suck!” and Cleveland is going to the playoffs and the Sox aren’t?  Sad.  10-year-old kids getting into my face in Fenway?  Pathetic. 

Now that doesn’t mean that there aren’t intelligent baseball fans in and around New England.  They’re just few and far between.  I used to hang out and drink at bars with a bunch  of old townies, but once they saw that even though I’m a die-hard, I can have an intelligent baseball discussion, they took me in. 

Now while living/working up there, I used to take the T all the time.  And since this was before the days that any jackass with a computer could come up with a blog/news source, I’d read this thing called a newspaper.  Now like most large cities in this country, there were two big dailies…the Globe and the Herald.  The Globe was a broadsheet format, and catered to the upper crust.  I’d get the Herald, because I’m a sucker for a tabloid format.  It’s just easier to read on the train.  And I didn’t mind the Herald.  Three pages of comics, and decent (albeit slanted) sports coverage.  Remember this was the paper the still dedicated two full pages to each of Clemens’ starts in Toronto, as if he still played in Boston…kind of how Green Bay still loved Favre when he went to the Jets. 

Now what I liked to do was read it cover-to-cover and scream in my head back at the columnists, sports or otherwise.  The only one that called a straight shot was Michael Gee, but he has other unrelated issues.  Now I know journalism is supposed to be impartial to an extent, but these guys were delusional borderline insane.  Oh, wait…it’s just the inferiority complex coming through again. 

Fast forward a couple of years.  The so-called curse has been broken, they won two World Series, and the Sox fans are as miserable as ever.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

This past September, Boston came to the Bronx to play one last three-game series against the Yanks.  What started as a lop-sided 0-8 season series, the Yanks were on the precipice of tying it up at 9-9 with a three game sweep.  On the Friday night pregame (September 25), Yankee announcer Suzy Waldbaums interviews Boston Herald sports columnist Steve Buckley.  (Go onto itunes and download it yourself.)He give her the usual fluff, that the Sox don’t care that the Yanks are in first and the wild card is just fine (I don’t buy it one bit).  He does make the point that it’s not like the Yanks get a first round bye like they would in football, but like he said out of one side of his mouth, and then out of his other, if you don’t have home-field advantage, you have to play that fifth game on the road. 

So things go swimmingly for the better part of the three-plus minute interview, and she wraps things up by saying, “It’s my guess that we’ll be doing this back again in a couple of weeks,” referring to the fact that the way things were lining up, there was a very good chance that the two teams would meet up in the ALCS.  The Yanks were going to face the Tigers (or the Twins if they were to face a monumental collapse) whom they only lost once to this season, and the Sox always do well against the Angels.  It was a hey, who knows kind of moment.  And those writers and announcers all run into each other before and after games, so even if he doesn’t go on the pregame again, she was sure to run into him in the hallways at some point. 

But then he pulls the ultimate dick move if there ever was one.  He thanks her, and then says, “Oh, by the way, I’m going with the Tigers in the first round over the Yankees.”  This throws her off for a second, because she’d expect this from some guy in the Fenway grandstands named Sully, not a supposed professional journalist.   But she then throws it back at him, saying that if the Angels beat the Sox, then they won’t be having this discussion in a couple of weeks, which of course he didn’t like, so he tried to reiterate his original point, by saying “I love the Yankees but I love Verlander more.” 

BULLSHIT.  You hate the Yankees, Steve. 

And then Suzyn Waldman makes the asute point, that “Verlander has to pitch all three games according to Steve Buckley.”  Nice.  Call him an asshole right there on the carpet, but in a subtle way, so that his pea brain doesn’t realize you’ve just shown everybody listening that his logic is not only flawed, but on the same level as a 10-year-old.  You, know, the ones that think they’re cool heckling a guy wearing Yankee cap in Fenway. 

I get it.  I know you’re a homer.  I know you’re rooting for the Yankees to lose each and every solitary game for some unknown reason.  What happened?  Were the nuns mean to you in school?  Somebody run over your dog?  Did you get touched as a kid?  So WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?  GROW THE FUCK UP AND ACT LIKE A FUCKING ADULT, DOUCHEBAG!!!

You see kids, they typical Sox fan is so insecure, that he trysto play dirty, and thinks he’s all cool in doing so.  And what’s worse, they’re all over the place now like cockroaches ever since they won a World Series or two.  But we all know they’re  nothing but a bunch of babies.  Today’s they’re all backpedaling.  They’ll try to say that the Yanks have done nothing the past couple of years, going out in the first round of the playoffs.  But when they it happens to them, oh, no, they were robbed.  It was this excuse or that excuse.  Blah, blah, blah.

As we all know, Steve Buckley’s predictions were wrong on so many levels.  First, the Twins beat the Tigers for the division.  Second, the Yankees took care of the Twins in the LDS.  Besides, the Yanks could have beaten the Tigers if they had played them.  Third, the Sox got their asses handed to them, and couldn’t keep up their end of the bargain.  So Friday night, poor Suzyn Waldman will have to talk to somebody from the Angels media corps.  Oh well…

This is perhaps one of my favorite t-shirts I own: